To the lighthouse
The Point of Ayr lighthouse is a romantic landmark on Talacre beach on the westeran side of the Dee estuary. Despite being some 25 miles from the city, the lighthouse lit the entrance to a deepwater channel up the Dee estuary to the port of Chester. While the deep water channel was created in the 1730s, the construction of the lighthouse was opposed by merchant interests at Liverpool. It took a tragedy over 40 years later to ensure that the entrance to this channel up the Dee estuary was finally lit for mariners.
In the Middle Ages and in the Early Modern period Chester was the most important port in the North West of England, despite requiring a long and difficult navigation up the Dee estuary; furthermore, the port suffered from siltation and struggled to accommodate the largest ships. Due to the lack of water depth at Chester, the Dublin packet boats – the equivalent of Irish Sea ferries – had by the 18th Century to sail from an out-port further down the Dee estuary at Parkgate.
Liverpool's Old Dock, built between 1710 and 1715, was the first commercial wet dock in the world and was an immediate success because it allowed large ships to berth safely and be discharged and loaded at a consistent water depth.
The Chester merchants responded to the challenge from Liverpool by developing a scheme to dredge a deep water channel on the western side of the Dee estuary to allow ships of up to 200 tons to navigate safely to Chester. Within this scheme they originally included a design for a lighthouse at Point of Ayr to mark the entrance to the channel. An Act of Parliament for a scheme was passed in 1732 and the dredging work completed between 1735 and 1737, but the construction of a lighthouse was successfully blocked by lobbying from Liverpool merchants.
Some 40 years later, on the night of 19-20th October 1775, two Dublin packet boats – the Trevor and the Nonpareil - sailed from Parkgate and, despite very high winds reached the waters off Holyhead before meeting the full force of an Atlantic storm. Unable to carry any sail, the two vessels were driven back towards the Lancashire coast.
The Trevor, which was reported as carrying wrought silks, millenary wares, haberdashery, silk lace, gold and silver watches, silver plate, plated goods, and woollen cloth as well passengers ran aground on sand banks near Poulton in Lancashire with the loss of all but one of the ship’s passengers and crew.
According to his wife, Captain Davis of the Nonpareil “did not like the appearance of the weather” on the evening of 19th October, but seems to have been cajoled into making the voyage by a certain Major Caulfield, a member of the Irish Parliament, and other “distinguished” passengers. It took Davis no less than three attempts to leave the berth at Parkgate because of the severity of the weather. The Nonpareil, which was carrying more passengers than the Trevor, ended up being driven aground on Hoyle Bank in the middle of the entrance to the Dee estuary. All passengers and crew perished.
In total 200 people died that night. As a result the Chester merchants put forward a scheme for two lighthouses and a complex scheme of buoys to mark the channel into the Dee estuary. This elaborate scheme was opposed by the River Dee Company – which had funded the dredged channel in the 1730s - on grounds of cost and by another effective lobbying campaign by Liverpool merchants, who argued that mariners would confuse the Point of Ayr lighthouses for those marking the navigation to the Port of Liverpool.
In the end a design for a single lighthouse was agreed and it was constructed in 1776 at a cost to a Trust of the Mayor, Recorder and Aldermen of Chester of £349 8s 1d. The lighthouse was only operational until 1844, when another light was built to light the entrance to the channel; as the latter structure was later dismantled, it is the original lighthouse which remains as a landmark on Talacre beach – and as a memorial to the 200 lives lost on the night of 19-20th October 1775.